


Rosie the Indomitable

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Flowers, Fluff, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22561936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rosie has been a front desk receptionist for the Magnus Institute for many years now. In the line of fire she's seen many strange things— the worm lady who’d managed to scratch out a statement on a blank memo Rosie had passed her, the guy who'd ended up cutting off his own finger with less effort than peeling an orange, that time someone in a sea captain’s hat rung for Elias on Valentine's Day and ended up drenching the entire building in fog.Still, even for her, the sight of Jonathan Sims brandishing a bouquet of what has to be more than two dozen roses is a new one.(work inspired by this particularfanartby @jaegerfker420)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 24
Kudos: 492





	Rosie the Indomitable

“Rosie.”

Receptionist and official assistant secretary to the Magnus Institute Rosanne “Rosie” Cartwright looks up from her paperwork with mild surprise. “Yes, sir?”

Rosie has been a front desk receptionist for the Magnus Institute for many years now. In the line of fire she's seen many strange things— the worm lady who’d managed to scratch out a statement on a blank memo Rosie had passed her, the guy who'd ended up cutting off his own finger with less effort than peeling an orange, that time someone in a sea captain’s hat rung for Elias on Valentine's Day and ended up drenching the entire building in fog.

Still, even for her, the sight of Jonathan Sims brandishing a bouquet of what has to be more than two dozen roses is a new one.

“Oh! Those are lovely, sir.” She peers at them curiously. Doesn't appear to be a name tag or anything, and they look _expensive_ as anything considering the fanciness of the arrangement— Rosie has an aunt who’s a florist, she’s seen what the good shit looks like— Jon clears his throat and snatches them back before she can get a good look at the attached card. “Is it an occasion?”

“No,” Jon replies, looking _way_ too grouchy for a man holding a bouquet to begin with, “not to my knowledge.”

Rosie gives him a blank look, hoping it'll convey her confusion without needing to say it, but it's Jonathan Sims, so it takes a second.

“I am not here to… _deliver flowers_ ,” Jon explains, with such disdain in his voice Rosie feels bad for the bouquet. “I believe they were put on my desk by mistake. No name tag was attached, so I endeavored to find you rather than any of my office coworkers.” His face curdles into a sour expression. “Though I _expect_ Tim had something to do with it. Always does when it comes to office pranks like this.”

“I’m sure Mr. Stoker wouldn't,” Rosie reassures him, lying right through her teeth. It _is_ something Tim would absolutely do; it just goes way out of his price range. Simply put, no one’s paid enough at the Institute to be buying arrangements this nice as a casual prank. “I’m sure it was a mistake. Or who knows— maybe you have a secret admirer!”

If Jon gets it’s a joke, his face doesn’t show it. “That’s unfortunate.” He places the flowers on Rosie’s desk with an air of mild disgust. “Please dispose of these as soon as possible, if you can. Keep them if you want, I suppose, but personally? Any gift from a stranger is an untrustworthy one.” Without another word he starts striding back down the hallway to his office.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rosie calls after Jon’s disappearing form, to no acknowledgement. The door swings closed behind him with the finality of a slam.

Rosie sighs, looking over at the slightly rumpled bouquet. It really would be a waste to just throw it out, not to mention whoever misplaced it must be _fuming._ She decides to keep it next to the company-gifted paperweights; if someone doesn't come to claim it by morning, she'll just take it home with her. In any case it'll go nicely with the succulents.

There _is_ a card attached— out of curiosity, Rosie peers at it. There's not much on it, and typed, so no identifiable handwriting.

_Here's to a new year._

“But it's _April,_ ” Rosie mutters to herself, before returning to her memos.

Later, Rosie gets another visitor— which is another sign it's an odd day, she doesn't often _get_ visits from the staff other than occasional checkups from Elias— in the form of Martin Blackwood, red-faced, huffing and puffing like a freight train.

“Hi Martin!” Rosie greets anyway, because hey— she likes Martin. Martin is nice. Rosie can withstand a little weirdness to hold a conversation with him.

He startles before wheezing out a response: “H-hi, Rosie— um—”

“Are you…” Martin looks like he's about to _cry._ Rosie, weathered after many years of calming down hysterical statement-givers-to-be, carefully schools her expression.“...okay? D’you need a glass of water or—”

“No, no, I, um,” he gasps between breaths. Had he sprinted here? It sure looks like it. “I’m looking for— have you gotten, like, uh, any strange items recently?”

Rosie blinks. “Like... the clay pot from Burma?”

“Uh, n-no.” Martin makes a big gesture that Rosie doesn't know how to interpret, but assumes it means something important. “Like— like, things someone at the _office_ might've brought.”

“Hm.” She glances toward the bouquet she’d put on the floor next to her purse. “Well, Jon came in with a whole thing of flowers earlier—”

“Thank _God_ ,” Martin yelps, before clapping a mortified hand over his mouth when he realizes his volume. “I— _really sorry_ about this, but that's— that's mine, I must've misplaced it— where'd you find it?”

“Again, Jon brought it in.”

Martin's face falls. “Wait, he… _what?”_

Rosie can only shrug. “Yeah, he told me to throw it out, but like, look at it. Thing must've cost a paycheck and a half—” (Martin winces at this) “– and anyway, are you guys celebrating something I don't know about? Like… office parties, or…?”

All of a sudden Martin freezes, as if he's been caught in a lie, but why would he be _lying?_ Rosie hasn't got an inkling. He opens his mouth, reconsiders, closes it without speaking. She waits patiently.

“It’s,” he starts, then pauses for a good ten seconds, “for my mum?”

That's odd, Rosie thinks. That thing’s mostly roses; she remembers from her aunt's visits that those are mainly for romance, either high school seniors serenading their dates for prom or twice-over divorcees getting apology flowers. Pink and purple’s usually the way to go for mums. Red and orange if they've got good taste.

Absently, Rosie taps her pen to her lips; Martin watches the movement with wide eyes like he's tracking a very big and unpleasant insect.

“Alright then, sorry for the inconvenience,” she says finally, heaving the bouquet over the counter with a grunt of exertion. Martin visibly sags in relief. “Say hi to your mum from me.”

“What? Oh— yeah. Yeah I will.” Martin tucks the perfumed mass of roses under his arm like it's a fragile, possibly dangerous artifact. He stutters out a few ‘thank you’s, nearly trips over his own feet, and all but flees out the entrance with heavy flushed cheeks.

 _Huh_ , Rosie thinks mildly. Martin had left before she could give him his notes about the case from Yugoslavia. Still, she's glad whatever business he and Jon had is sorted out. Hopefully it doesn't happen again.

* * *

It happens again.

Rosie thinks this is a really _mundane_ situation to be trapped in, if this _is_ a Groundhog Day loop like she's starting to suspect, watching Jon lug around another intricately arranged bouquet all the while muttering curses. Though maybe that's part of the horror. Being trapped in banal, white-collar work environments for eternity, the modern woman's existential horror. Rosie resolves to take it in stride.

This time Jon doesn't stick around to chat, even though Rosie tries to bait him into casual conversation. Never a talkative one, that Jonathan. As of now she has _yet another_ elaborate and wholly expensive stack of flowers on her table, without an inkling of what to do with them.

“The hell is _that?”_

“Hi, Melanie,” Rosie says mildly, not looking up from her laptop when Melanie King prods the ornate bundle of Gerbera daisies stacked awkwardly next to a pile of paperwork, wrapped up in a nice little ribbon.

Miss King is a relatively recent addition to their team, though Rosie's been a fan of her work since the first season of Ghost Hunt. Shame that whole thing's kind of put on hold, but hey, any helping hands to the office are welcome hands.

"Who's this for?" She tilts her head at Rosie with an arched brow. "Got a missus you're trying to impress or something?"

"Ah, no, nothing like that," Rosie waves her off. "It was dropped off at my desk earlier." By Jon, she doesn't say, because even Rosie is more than a little aware of the _animosity_ between those two. She doesn't want these to become funeral flowers.

Melanie's nose wrinkles. "No one died, did they? Lord knows Elias wouldn't inform me until a month after the fact."

She rolls her eyes. "If anyone did, I'd have let you know by at least this morning. Can you believe this isn't the first time?"

"Oh, I can believe it," Melanie scoffs. "It sounds like a shitty statement. Case 0160417, case of the disappearing/reappearing geraniums."

"Gerbera daisies," corrects Rosie.

Melanie gives a one-shouldered shrug. "Never learned the difference. Flowery stuff's more of Blackwood's jurisdiction in any case, isn't it?" She starts heading back down the hall, calling over her shoulder, "Good luck with whatever spooky bullshit this is."

“Thanks,” Rosie calls back, sighing discreetly through her nose once she's gone. A hard worker, that Melanie, but she sure will give you shit for it.

This time she's expecting Martin’s arrival, about twenty minutes later. Thankfully, he looks substantially less stressed than last visit, carrying two steaming mugs of tea, one of which has a cute little cat decal on it, how charming. Martin smiles nervously in her direction before tottering over and placing a mug on the desk.

“Tea for helping me out last week,” he chirps, rubbing his arm compulsively as she accepts it with a small ‘ooh’ of surprise.

“Why thank you!” It's not often she gets tea in exchange for helping out— ‘ _it’s the job I'm paying you for_ ,’ Elias had said, peering down at her over thin, wire-rimmed glasses— but Martin's just a very good sport about this sort of thing (not to mention a bit of a tea enthusiast). “Funny, that. I got _another_ bouquet just a bit ago—”

Martin’s face falls. “Wait, _what?”_

Rosie gestures over at the arrangement of daisies resting next to the wall, complete with a flourishing gold ribbon tied around the stems. “Didn’t say much about it this time. He just kind of plopped it on my desk, like he's apt to do. And, y’know, grunted—”

“I can’t believe this,” mutters Martin, suddenly despondent.

“Oh hey. Hey.” Rosie leans over her desk to put a hand on his shoulder. “Buck up, champ, what’s wrong?”

“Did he even _look_ at the card?”

“I don’t think so. I didn't either, actually, hang on, I'll check—” she scoots over on her rolling chair and plucks the small piece of laminated paper (with those golden curly borders inlaid, very fancy) from the vase.

_From your not-that secret admirer._

“Ooooooh,” says Rosie in slow understanding.

Martin continues to look miserable.

“...for him?”

He nods.

“... _reeeally—”_

“Look,” snaps Martin, “I know. I know it's cheesy probably a bad idea and I have really terrible taste. And that I'm probably wasting my time on him, not to mention my _paycheck.”_ His voice goes a little strangled at the end. “But— but— but he's just—!”

He makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, pushing his face into the palms of his hands, “I really like him! And I don't have a good track record with people I like! So I just thought I might make, you know, a— a nice gesture, romantic even, but he's so bloody thick-skulled and it'll be a million years before he even looks my way—”

“Take deep breaths, lad,” instructs Rosie, because she's watching his face grow redder and redder like a sun-dried tomato as he breathlessly continues to rant.

Martin sucks in a breath and lets it all out in a giant gasp, still flushed as he realizes how much he'd been talking, but Rosie's never minded that sort of thing. She's not so wordy a person, prefers to take action over diplomacy, and it's nice to have someone to fill all those long pauses.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

He swallows, clears his throat into his fist. “Well. It actually started a really long time ago, ’bout when Jon became Head Archivist, you know? It was just a little crush. It was _supposed_ to be just a little crush,” his voice squeaks angrily, desperately.

“But then it didn't leave, it just got bigger and bigger after Prentiss and everything that happened—” _everyone we've lost_ goes unsaid “—everything is so different now. I thought… I thought this could be different too. I thought, I don't know, maybe I could go for it. What do I have to lose. And— and I really care about him, I want him to know that, cause I think he doesn't really believe it.”

Rosie steeples her fingers.

“Martin,” she says, face dire, “get me the box on the third shelf of that cabinet.”

Unsettled, Martin does.

She opens it and takes out the jar of honey inside, scooping a veritable amount and stirring it into her mug. “Helps me think,” she explains, before taking a long slurp.

“O—oh, of course.” He sits there awkwardly as he waits for her to finish drinking.

Three long sips later, Rosie contemplates aloud. “So you want to show him you care about him.”

“Yeah.”

“So why don't you just tell him you care about him through, I don't know, verbal communication? And not ambiguously phrased cards that aren't signed with your name?”

Martin sputters. “Well— well, when you put it like that it sounds stupid! It's not— I can't just—” he sighs. “Words are hard.”

“You can't keep taking chunks out of your paycheck forever, honey.”

“I know… I'm just… I have _no_ idea how he really feels about me. I don't know if he even likes me. At all. And the _worst_ thing in the world would be screwing this up and making him feel like he can't be friends with me, I'd be happy just being at that level with him pretty much forever if I had to.”

“You’d settle?” Rosie cocks an eyebrow.

“Well… I wouldn't call it—”

“Settling’s a bad look for prospective lovers, Marto. You gotta fight for what you want.” She drums her fingers on the tabletop. “If I were being wooed by a nice young lady and she rolled over to ‘let’s just be friends’ the second I showed a hint of apprehension or ambiguity, that wouldn't be a good look for her, would it? What, you're not going to have your voice heard, your love expressed?”

Martin flushes very dark. “I— well— _love_ is—”

“You want to woo him, Martin?”

“Y—”

“You want to let that man know you care for his well-being?”

“I— uh. Yes!”

She brandishes her mug. “You want to give him some goddamn flowers?”

“YES,” Martin barks, then immediately sinks into his seat as he realizes how loud he was.

Rosie gestures with a flourish. “Then give him some flowers.”

“Right! You're right, yes, um, thanks Rosie bye—” Martin clomps out the lobby with the speed and grace of a particularly nervous rhinoceros, footsteps echoing down the hall.

Rosie smiles and leans back in her seat, satisfied.

A few seconds later, an out-of-breath, sheepish Martin pokes his head back through the entrance. “Sorry, could you give me those flowers back? I _really_ don't have the money to pay for another.”

* * *

Like all good secretaries, she eavesdrops when she has the chance.

Martin is easy enough to track down; the errant path of fallen flower petals is conspicuous at best and leads a nice trail toward the front of the building, where the big doors with antique-looking knobs are stationed and plenty of outcroppings obscure the view of her gently peeking out of a crack in the doorframe.

She feels a few heads hovering above hers and sighs. “You’re looking on too?”

“Duh,” Basira says, “I could hear him from a floor up, I've got to hear this play out if it kills me.”

“It is curious observing,” says the frizzy-haired businesswoman whom Rosie is unfamiliar with but has seen exiting yellow-framed doors that disappear and reappear periodically.

Melanie is already recording with her phone camera.

They watch as Martin runs out into the (now pouring) rain, bouquet in hand, without an umbrella. He skids on the wet asphalt and nearly smacks his face into a lamppost, but manages to catch himself. He's visibly soaked in seconds.

Jon is standing outside, umbrella and cigarette in hand, looking dramatic and miserably contemplative as usual. He glances over his shoulder as he hears Martin approach, does a double take, then nearly collides with him head on as he begins admonishing Martin indistinctly but loudly for going out when it's storming.

Martin brandishes the bouquets like a weapon and shoves them info Jon's chest, an outpouring of words flowing from him that Rosie can't hear, but considering how again his face goes red as a fire hydrant and he starts nervously rocking his hands, it's all some kind of romantic.

Jon looks at the flowers clutched in his own hands almost incredulously, shakes his head a few times, and protests as he tries pushing them back into Martin's.

Martin adamantly refuses, jabbing a finger into Jon's chest as he says something that makes Jon go wide-eyed and sputtering and flushed at the edges.

“Doesn’t it look like they're an old married couple having a row, when in reality they probably still don't know shit about how they feel about one another?" asks Melanie, prompting murmurs of agreement.

Jon looks like he's on the cusp of argument again, but Martin takes a last deep breath before steadying his hands on Jon's shoulders, his expression smoothing out from panicked and anxious to something more contained, more calm, more ready. He says something soft and low, looking Jon in the eyes all throughout, and all the while Jon goes from looking confused and almost caged, to slight understanding, to dawning realization, then just plain to quiet embarrassment.

Martin smiles a little, invitingly, and for the first time Rosanne "Rosie" Cartwright has seen in her long-running career at the Magnus Institute, Jonathan smiles back.

He offers an arm and hesitantly, Jon takes it. Martin has to duck to be under the umbrella, and with the height imbalance, well, Rosie can't help but think they look a little silly. But they look silly together, and for all intents and purposes, the rest of the world has probably disappeared for both of them, even the pouring rain.

Rosie lets them have a brief respite. The rest of the ladies are crowing some form of, "I knew it!" and "Finally!" as they head towards the nearby bar for happy hour, but Rosie stays behind to clean her desk.

She stops to water her spider plant, the more permanent arboreal resident of her desk in the midst of the onslaught of flowers these past couple days, and she watches a tiny little arachnid scuttle its way up and out of the stem's hollow divot.

“We did it, gentlemen,” Rosie whispers to ears only she can reach, being careful not to break the carefully constructed web hanging between leaves, “we helped a friend.”

The spiders scuttle and crawl and hum their approval.

She smiles. “Nice to help them out every once in a while, isn't it? Clueless boys. I hope they're quite happy with each other.”

Their front feelers twitch.

Rosie finishes watering her plant, shuts the light off, and heads off toward another pleasant evening.

The Indomitable Rosie cracks another case.


End file.
